1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates generally to mounting face pieces to buildings. It is particularly concerned with mounting marble and artificial marble face pieces to public buildings, commercial buildings, towers and most particularly to the fronts of crypts arranged in horizontal rows and vertical tiers in mausoleum walls. This invention is particularly well suited for mausoleum construction because it provides a method and apparatus for removably fastening slabs of marble, artificial marble and like materials used to conceal individual crypts in mausoleum walls while simultaneously providing a means for bringing these slabs into esthetically pleasing horizontal row and vertical tier alignments.
2. Prior Art
The methods and apparatus disclosed by the prior art for mounting face pieces onto a structure generally involve embedding anchor blocks into the structural material (e.g. concrete, steel and marble). The anchor blocks are generally provided with one or more anchor bolts which are in turn attached to backing plates having slots for receiving the anchor bolts. These slots provide for slight vertical and/or horizontal adjustments of the backing plates which in turn provides for adjustments of the face pieces. These adjustments are usually necessary because the dimensional tolerances for marble slabs and the concrete walls to which they are attached are each about one-eighth of an inch. Hence adjustments of up to about one-quarter inch are often necessary to compensate for these discrepancies. The ability to make these small adjustments is particularly helpful in those situations where some of the face pieces must be removed and replaced as in the case of burial crypts located in mausoleum walls. Representative methods for making small adjustments of this type are taught in U.S. Pat. Nos. 2,618,145; 3,905,169 and 3,990,199. Generally the corners of four face pieces are held in a quadrant arrangement by slidable brackets having a quadrant shoulder section and a slot to receive a bolt which extends horizontally from a wall of the structure through a hole formed by removing the corner of each of the four face pieces. The bolt is extended through the resultant hole and ends in a bolt head which holds the face pieces in their quadrant relationship between the bolt head and the bracket. The bolt head normally has a rosette or other decorative plate to hide the hole formed by the removal of the corners of the four pieces. However, the use of slotted mounting brackets constructed to receive four adjoining face pieces in a quadrant arrangement presents certain drawbacks. For example, the use of slotted mounting brackets has not totally solved the vertical and horizontal alignment problems because the great weight of the marble facing pieces often causes the bracket to slip with respect to the mounting belt. Furthermore, many of the prior art bracket slots are only adjustable in a vertical direction or in a diagonal direction in the manner taught in U.S. Pat. No. 3,778,942. Therefore these arrangements give limited horizontal plane adjustment capabilities. Furthermore, the prior art mounting bracket arrangements with their quadrant shoulder sections do not readily permit third dimension i.e., depth adjustments between the face pieces and the walls to which they are attached. That is, they do not permit variations in the spacing relationship between the back of the face piece and the front of the wall or the front of the mounting brackets. Alignment limitations in any of the three dimensions are particularly vexatious when the front pieces of a structure must be periodically removed and replaced as in the case of a burial mausoleum having a different face piece for each individual crypt. Furthermore, the use of one mounting bolt to hold a slidable bracket which in turn holds four adjacent face pieces also poses safety problems. When four of these mounting bolts are removed so that one face piece can be removed to allow for insertion of a casket in a crypt, the adjoining face pieces sometimes slip or even fall from the mausoleum wall from lack of support at the corner where the bolt was removed. Hence the ability to make minor vertical and horizontal adjustments without the use of mounting brackets which can slip with respect to their mounting bolts would be of great advantage. Furthermore, the ability to make depth adjustments in conjunction with these horizontal and vertical adjustments would also of great practical value. From the safety point of view, it would be particularly beneficial if the loosening of one face piece did not concomitantly loosen the adjoining ones.